Dave Wright has been fighting a strenuous battle since last April, trying torecover the $16,500 worth of Bitcoin stolen from his Mt. Gox account. The cryptocurrency user lost the coins a few months ago when his account was hacked by a thief with an IP address based in Holland and the money was transferred without his knowledge.

“Every time I log back into my account it is like returning to a murder scene, so sad”, Wright says. The man has been contacting the Japan-based exchange since he noticed the theft occurred, but Mt. Gox says there’s nothing they can do to return his funds, telling him that he has to contact his local police and make a complaint.

Dave Wright cashed in 130 of his Bitcoins at $127 each – equivalent to $16,510 – and was planning to use the profits to pay off medical bills. However, Mt. Gox’s policy only allows $1000 to be cashed out in each 24-hour period, so Wright was slowly getting disbursements of his money. At the time, he hoped that the complete transaction would be finished within a few weeks.

But during that period a hacker broke into his account and interrupted the process. The thief then converted all the proceeds back into Bitcoins and transferred them all out to himself, goind around the $1000 per day policy.

“What makes me mad is that Mt. Gox has a new double verification security procedure that would have stopped all this from happening. I have been with Mt. Gox for years and they never bothered to even send me an email to let me know this extra security feature existed. I thought my encrypted password was safe enough, apparently not. The transaction is so obviously a theft, I wish Mt. Gox would do something besides simply pointing the finger at me“, the victim regrets.

Maria is an experienced journalist currently living in the UK. She has been writing about Bitcoin and the altcoin universe since 2013. She is also a member of the Lifeboat Foundation's New Money Systems Board and a big cryptocurrency supporter.